Sculpting young minds

Lisa Ferguson

Monday, April 21, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

It's been nearly a decade since Rosarita Olvina roamed the winding halls of Cannon Middle School as a student.

"I was a real nerd in school," she admits. "I hung around a little group (of students) that the administration sort of knew. The administration only knows you if you're really good or really bad."

Olvina, who played on the school's volleyball and basketball teams and maintained straight A's, was one of the good ones.

"She was very bright, worked very hard, definitely wanted to make good grades," recalls Kathy Rednour, Olvina's eighth-grade business teacher in 1986.

To get a head start on her high school credits, Olvina swelled her middle school class schedule with extra math and science courses.

"I never really had the freedom to take an art class," she says. "All of my teachers were saying, 'You should take a computer class.'"

So there was never a reason for her to venture into oblong Room 100, where other students' painting, drawing and clay projects were taking shape.

Until last fall, when, at age 23, she began her career teaching art in that very classroom.

"Which is really strange," Olvina says, wrinkling her round nose at the irony.

Cannon was the last place the UNLV graduate had expected to find herself, especially since she'd entered college in '91 to pursue a mechanical-engineering degree.

Plans changed. "I started being more honest with myself (about) what I liked to do, and that was art. I was good at all of my subjects, but it was the one thing I really lost myself in."

While participating in the University of Pittsburgh's Semester at Sea program, she lived aboard a converted cargo ship touring the globe and studing the art and culture wherever they dropped anchor, including India, Turkey and Egypt.

"That made all the difference in my life. It made me want to teach what I learned globally. That's my whole source of inspiration."

Back at UNLV, she took an education course as an elective and decided to stick with it.

"I seem to have definite opinions about education and what we should be teaching," she says. "We need to make students lifelong learners so that they're interested in what they're studying."

Not just "working for a grade."

But even with her teaching license in hand, it didn't take Olvina long, after being hired as the school's sole art instructor, to realize that she still had a lot to learn about sculpting -- not clay, but young minds.

Many of her 130 students are considered at-risk. They lack the stanines -- recommended academic placement scores -- to succeed in academically driven elective subjects, such as foreign language and computer studies.

Hence, art becomes a dumping ground of sorts.

"I get a lot of the kids who don't even want to be in school," something she hadn't anticipated.

"I was so in love with my subject matter that it never occurred to me these kids may not be, and that they may not even want to be in art ... and that I'd somehow have to try to convince them" of its value.

"I may be the only exposure they ever get towards art."

On a recent afternoon, Olvina again strolled the year-round school's halls.

A lot has changed in 10 years.

"The numbers in the classroom just blow me away," she says. Cannon's student body is around 1,500 this year.

Even more disturbing, she says, are the day-to-day issues '90s teens deal with.

"They're so anti-everything," she says. "I've heard more anti-gay remarks than I've heard racial remarks. I don't even remember thinking about that when I was 13. It's really scary.

"I think in middle school, a lot of what we're teaching them isn't actually in the content area." Rather, basic social skills. "There's a real lack of respect. How are these kids going to get along with other people?"

It's something Olvina experienced firsthand.

Sure, she's older and wiser now. But with her petite frame, youthful face and fashionable wardrobe, it's still easy to mistake her for a student.

Or, in the case of her pupils, for a pal.

Early in the year, she noticed that some students interpreted her youthful appearance as a green light to dismiss her authority.

"After the second or third week of school," she recalls, "I was like, 'I've got to get more control. A lot of these kids are mistaking me for their friend, and I really can't have that.'"

Olvina's long mane of dark hair was the first thing to go -- trimmed into a more conservative bob.

"I thought I could maybe separate myself with my looks. I tried a bunch of different things," she says.

Cannon's principal, Chris Erbe, had his qualms, too.

At first, "I thought, 'Oh my goodness, these kids are gonna eat her up.'" He soon changed his mind. "She has such good classroom control ... (her age) doesn't even come up anymore."

What can't be changed by a new hairdo, however, is the connection some students feel with their young teacher.

"Since I'm younger, they confide in me about things that are going on in their home life and ... it can be very bad," Olvina says, "because I don't have the solutions to everything.

"They're 13 ... and what I say could really influence them. It's really hard, but I'd rather at least try to see if I can get them some help or refer them to a counselor."

Her efforts are apparent to the students.

"I think she tries to be a good teacher. It's obvious, you can see that," says eighth-grader Jamie Engel. "She tries to show that she's happy, and you can tell sometimes that she's not."

Having once been a Cannon Cardinal herself, "She relates to every kid in the building," Erbe says.

"Anybody can teach the really sharp kid, the well-behaved kid, but Rory (her nickname) connects with every kid."

Olvina says, "I've realized the best thing I can do as a teacher is to be who I am. If I'm honest with them about what I'm doing and why I'm here, they're a lot more responsive, and I'm much better at what I do."

Which is helping students unlock their creative potential.

This year, Cannon's sky-blue corridors are decorated with the artistic endeavors of Olvina's eighth-grade students.

They've experimented with different perspectives in drawings, like re-creating photos from National Geographic using only their thumbprints. Several teens helped create murals in the cafeteria and on the school's roof.

The teacher is particularly fond of the "gesture drawings" -- quick sketches students made while posing for each other.

It's a drawing technique Olvina learned in college. It came in handy while teaching a recent unit on impressionist art.

"I totally trick them," Olvina says, giggling. "I don't even think most of them realize they're learning. For the most part, they just amaze themselves with what they're doing."

On a recent morning, she circled the classroom, stopping to check the progress of drawings the chattering students had begun working on the previous day.

Peering over eighth-grader Staci Garner's shoulder, she offered a few hints to improve her work in progress, a sketch of a girl perched on a stool.

"It looked deformed and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it," Staci explains. Then she snatches up her pencil to make the corrections Olvina suggested. "You've got to show the heel of the foot so it shows the girl sitting on the stool."

A few of Olvina's students have expressed interest in pursuing art as a career. So the teacher has begun collecting pieces of their classwork for them to include in a portfolio.

"They're just so creative and inventive," she says. "I completely love this age. They're still kids, so they're still quirky enough to try new things."

There's more going on in this brightly decorated art classroom, though, than mixing paint and making papier mache. Olvina uses art as a medium to introduce literature, science, social studies and even math to students.

She explained how light waves are emitted to create the different hues of the color wheel, and how heat and other physical properties work together during plaster projects.

"It interrelates completely," she contends, "and if it's used correctly, these kids can fall in love with other subjects because of what they see in this class."

Writing assignments, especially self-evaluations, are plentiful. "That's to help them start thinking about about who they are and where they're going," she explains.

"I tell them that if they can't communicate verbally, how can they communicate visually? That bugs them to death. They're (saying), 'You know, I write more in here than I do in English class.'"

Don't be fooled by the display of angst. Olvina is confident that her class is "really the only reason some of these kids come to school."

Because she studied fine art in college, teaching the most basic principles of art has proved challenging for Olvina.

"I'm expected to be an expert at clay, at airbrushing and at drawing, when maybe all I've taken in that subject is one semester in college."

She's continuing her studies, via a pair of evening art courses at UNLV. Much of her free time is dedicated to learning about materials and "just fine-tuning my technical skills."

"I don't think she realized how difficult (teaching) was going to be," says Rednour, who teaches Cannon's computer classes. "I think she gets worn out, (but) I think she's gonna be fine."

Olvina relies heavily on the guidance of fellow teachers involved with the Art Educators of Southern Nevada organization, which meets twice monthly to share class project ideas and advice on where to purchase low-cost supplies.

It's her "support group."

"I don't know how I'd be surviving without that association, because I'm alone (in the art department) at this school, so I have no one else to get feedback off of."

Even after teaching five classes a day and sponsoring Cannon's art and bowling clubs in the afternoon, Olvina often spends evenings, weekends and holidays in the classroom preparing lessons and projects. During track breaks, she'll substitute for other teachers.

The long hours are self-imposed. "At this point, I don't really have a lot of commitments besides my career and right now, that's what I'm focused on in my life.

"When you really have a passion for something, it's not like work," she says. "I don't think I'm getting paid what I'm worth, but I'm doing something that I love.

"My principal comes in here (at night) and says, 'We need to work on getting you a life,'" she says with a laugh.

"I've had other teachers tell me, 'You're burning yourself out.' They always tell me that I'm doing a good job, but that you can't expect to be perfect your first year."

Still, Olvina tries.

"For the first time in my life, I feel so old. I feel so responsible. If I don't have my stuff together, that's one day of learning wasted," she says.

"I went from being a carefree college student to being responsible for 130 kids who come in here to have a safe environment. I feel like I've matured a lot this year."

archive